Debrief and Synthesize

The work doesn't end when the interview does. Two separate activities, debriefing and synthesis, determine whether your conversations become decisions or drift into forgotten recordings.

Debriefing ≠ Synthesis

Debriefing happens immediately after each interview, ideally within 15-30 minutes. It captures raw impressions, emotional tone, specific quotes, and methodological adjustments before memory decays.

Synthesis happens at the end of the entire campaign. It identifies patterns across all interviews, validates or invalidates hypotheses, and produces the Evidence Map.

The Debrief Flow

After each interview, bring any observers together for a 30-minute structured session:

1. Pain points (5 min solo + 5 min discuss), what problems did you hear?
2. Surprises (5 min solo + 5 min discuss), what contradicted your assumptions?
3. Key quotes (3 min), what exact words will you remember?
4. Unanswered questions (3 min), what do you need to probe in the next interview?
5. Method adjustments (3 min): how should the guide change for interview #N+1?

The "method adjustments" step is where debriefing turns into better research. If Interview 3 revealed a problem you'd never considered, adjust Interview 4's Peak questions to test whether that problem shows up for others. The discussion guide is a living document during the campaign.

Synthesis: Pattern, Not Anecdote

Synthesis requires discipline to avoid three traps:

1. The vivid quote trap: one articulate participant's emotionally intense quote overshadows five others who were quieter but more representative. Count: how many people expressed this view?
2. The over-generalization trap: if every participant who described a problem was a beginner learner in their first two weeks, the conclusion should specify beginners, not "users."
3. The missing pattern trap: sometimes the most important finding is what nobody said, or the relationship between two themes only visible in comparison.

For each hypothesis: what evidence supports it? Contradicts it? How many participants, from which segments? What was the emotional intensity?

Output: a concise decision memo. Not a 50-page report.